Action Profiling

The success of a business is determined by its decisions.

Businesses do not make decisions, people do.

The Action Profile® system is based on the study of both individual and group thinking specifically related to the decision-making process. Analysing the way that you currently approach any problem or decision - whether in your business or personal life - gives insights that will have immediate positive impacts on difficult relationships, improved performance in teams, and more time available in the business.

An Action Profile® is

• A unique and comprehensive analysis of your own personal thinking and decision process.   
• A proven performance improvement system that accurately measures your decision process.  It will improve how you work with other people through natural co-operation, transparent communication, mutual trust and reliance. 
• An opportunity to allow yourself to fulfil your natural decision pattern, where you will be energised, highly motivated, and feel satisfied.  As a plus point you will be working automatically with your personal strengths.
• Free of any racial, cultural or gender bias.

The Action Profile® is a unique way to measure an individual’s decision-making process with unparalleled accuracy. The results can be used to ensure teams of people work together with natural co-operation, transparent communication, and mutual trust and reliance.

The Action Profile® Framework explained – the ‘Rolls Royce’ of the assessment world

The Action Profile® Framework is the model used to describe individual and managerial thinking, related to decision-making. It is a systematic way of describing our thinking and predictable action.

Action Profile® Framework is based on the premise that human non-verbal action and movement reflect unique styles of inner motivation. This inner motivation is a powerful force affecting the way people make decisions, solve problems, express ideas and pursue plans and actions. Each individual’s style of inner motivation reflects a unique balance between the way energy is spent and perspective is used. Both these tendencies are identifiable in different stages within the decision-making process.

Every individual has a unique in-built pattern of thinking, a preferred way of solving problems and making decisions. It is a mental blueprint, which appears to control our thinking in a quite unconscious way. This blueprint is believed to develop from birth to our late teenage years. It is the individual pathway that our thinking takes as we make decisions and then take action.

If we are allowed to function according to this spontaneous pattern we are likely to be highly effective, have high motivation, and an ongoing sense of satisfaction. When we find ourselves ‘at odds’ with a situation or task it is often because it requires us to think and behave in a way that is diametrically opposed to our normal way of thinking. When we do some things easily and really well – if challenged we cannot explain how we do it! By fully understanding our decision making style we can see more clearly how and why we are successful, or not. In addition this knowledge helps us to develop effective work strategies and dramatically improve relationships with colleagues.

So, in summary, an individual has a Core Action Profile® which maps the in-built preferences which she/he has, across the three decision stages, and identifies the built-in preferences in terms of the 12 Polarities of the Action Profile® model.

In addition the Action Profile® identifies an interaction style which in turn modifies the Core Decision style.

The Layers of the Personality

The outer pale green layer is the one that is obvious to all, and often judged; it includes "left brain" intellectual skills such as listening and influencing. With practice, these techniques which get us into action can be modified and our behaviour changed.

The middle blue layer is where deeper long held attitudes, values and habits lie. By exploring this layer we begin to understand some of the negative behaviours that we have that have helped shape our life.

The central lavender area holds our deep seated energies and belief systems, which are hard or even impossible to change. This is where our many performance buttons lie – such as feelings of "Not Good Enough" and "Disrespected". This is also where our Decision Pattern from the Action Profile® sits, right at the core of who we are. Action Profile® measures a particular type of thinking. Some of our thinking is about playing with concepts or theories which remain just that. The Action Profile® is about thinking that leads to action. We are figuring out what to do. We call it Action Motivation. Awareness of one's pattern and other elements of this core can enable a reduction in judgement of ourselves and others, leading to different and better outcomes.

Principles of Core Motivation

• Action Motivation is simply energy and is neither good nor bad.
• People will act according to their action motivations as freely and fully as possible.
• If circumstances (such as job requirements) inhibit people’s ability to function according to their Action Motivations in a particular area, then they will compensate by seeking full expression outside that situation, or they will unconsciously seek to change the boundaries of the job.
• When a person is feeling stressed or threatened, the Action Motivation becomes more extreme (high areas become higher and low areas lower) but less evident. Survival-oriented coping behaviours become more prominent.
• When a person is working under optimal conditions, ie, with the right level of challenge (positive pressure rather than negative threat or stress) there is a balance between natural Action-Motivated behaviour and learned skills and competencies.
• The Action Motivation is expressed as a pattern or sequence.
• The pattern of Action Motivation colours the way a person interprets the need for action – ie. s/he always tends to see a greater need to take action in line with their high motivations, and a lesser need to take action in line with their low motivations.
• Action Motivations colour the way people interpret and judge the actions of others. They tend to understand and applaud Action Patterns similar to their own; conversely, they tend to misunderstand, and hence, undervalue or mistrust, Patterns different from their own.